


No Church in the Wild

by uro_boros



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Tumblr drabbles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-15
Updated: 2015-01-15
Packaged: 2018-03-07 16:17:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 846
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3177014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/uro_boros/pseuds/uro_boros
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Erwin’s seventeen on his first expedition.</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Church in the Wild

Erwin’s seventeen on his first expedition. 

In hindsight, it’s very young, although there are younger among the ranks of the newly-cloaked Scouting Legion members. There are a few fifteen year olds, sixteen, the middling line between child and adult, though they’ve been adults in the eyes of the law for years now. There’s an older boy from the south in his squadron named Mike. 

Very few of the new members are from his trainee group.

Mike rides on his left; on his right, a girl with her hair braided tight around her head and fear in the tight pinch of her mouth.

It’s not Erwin’s place to comment on her fears. The most they’ve ever faced, collectively, are the wooden titan dummies of the trainee grounds, their necks stuffed full of straw. In an effort to preserve the core of the Scouting Legion’s fighting forces, the commander has ordered the new members to the outskirts of the formation. Erwin knows that Squad Leader Shadis had protested the move and been overruled. 

Erwin considers that all of his careful preparations, all the thoughts he’s had about this moment, will fail in the light of the actual thing. He isn’t sure how it makes him feel. Mike’s horse makes a snuffling noise, interrupting.

“Are you afraid?” he asks Mike.

Mike’s hair is shaggy. He’s big, big enough that the slender horses of the Scouting Legion looks overwhelmed by the sheer weight of his mass. There’s the fairest shadow of stubble on his chin; it rasps against the hand he drags across his mouth. “Sure,” he says steadily, and under the fringe of his hair, Erwin can see that his eyes are sharp and bright. “Nothing wrong with being afraid though.”

The girl with tightly braided hair is muttering a prayer to the Walls under her breath. Erwin can see that her hands are white around the reins. 

“She’d disagree,” Erwin jokes.

Mike cranes his head to catch a look at her. When he speaks, there’s the barest hint of sympathy in his voice. “We’re probably going to die.”

“Yes,” Erwin says calmly, eyes shutting for the briefest moment. “I know.”

Mike shrugs. 

The girl sucks on her teeth, darting them an anxious glance. It’s lost, ultimately, in the gallop they break into, trampling the brush and forest that springs up in the places that humanity leaves behind. 

Erwin wishes, later, that he had learned her name. 

He is seventeen his first expedition, hanging suspended from the thick branch of a tree, as a titan blinks curiously childlike eyes up at him, its hands grabbing lazily at his legs. His horse is crushed under its foot. He wonders if he will be seventeen when he dies. The hooks of his gear are solid in the branch, his feet planted against the side of the tree; but it’s not a position from which the back of the neck is easily accessible, and the closest tree is too far away to swing to without forward momentum. The rest of the squadron is in shambles, too many loose spots on its edges, where the new recruits were incapable or unable to fill the holes meant for veterans. It’s a ruthless consideration on the part of the commander. It’s not a wrong one. Just ruthless.

The titan under him pats curiously at the tree. Its fist is meaty, and the leaves around Erwin rustle. His gear creaks, splinters forming alongside the pronged edges.

He closes his eyes and lets his body fall. The titan’s fingers begin to close. Erwin twists his body in a tightly controlled spin, blades drawn. 

Titan blood is hot, near burning in its frantic attempt to sizzle away. It’s startling different than the rain of hay that followed the mock killing of one of the dummies during training. The titan makes another grab at him, but its fingers are gone now. It grunts, flexing what’s left of its knuckles once, before bending to swallow him whole. Erwin hooks onto the tree next to it, pushing himself off its trunk forcefully.

The skin is doughy. He hadn’t expected that. He balances himself precariously on the roll of neck fat and stabs down with his blades. The titan shrieks. Erwin pushes harder.

“It sounded like it was crying,” he tells Mike later, on a horse that isn’t his own as they pad, defeated, through the quiet crowds of Shiganshina. Mike had founded him in the forest, two horses toeing the marshy ground behind him. He’d handed the reins of one to Erwin silently; his blade replacements were down to two, and Erwin considered what that meant. He’s uninjured, but the Scouting Legion has lost a third of their new recruits. “As I killed it, it sounded human.”

Mike catches his eye. He taps the tip of his nose with a square finger. “I can smell them,” he says quietly. 

“And?”

“They stink. But under that, they smell human.”

Erwin exhales. Mike looks away from him. The crowd parts around them, like the sea in a story Erwin’s father once told him.


End file.
